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Since emerging publicly in October 2024, Iktifaa Agricultural Investment has expanded its announced activities to cover most Syrian provinces. That expansion raises questions about the protection of landowners’ rights and transparency in the management of proceeds. The company’s ties to earlier agricultural entities in Idlib raise further questions about its transition from a local operation to a company that, according to one of its officials, belongs to a sector within the Syrian sovereign fund.
Press reports have examined allegations about Iktifaa’s management of land belonging to absent owners in rural Hama, including “signing investment contracts under conditions that some owners said limited their ability to refuse,” as well as uncertainty over crop revenues and mechanisms for protecting owners’ rights.
Responding to these allegations, the director of the company’s Hama branch told Syria TV that Iktifaa belongs to the sovereign fund’s agriculture and livestock sector. He said it began operating in areas where many landowners were absent following the province’s liberation in December 2024.
Iktifaa’s emergence had precedents. Before it appeared publicly in October 2024, posts had appeared under the names of Al Khadraa and Ghiras, two companies active since 2022 in Idlib and other areas formerly controlled by the Salvation Government.
A review of auction notices and office addresses reveals shared auction locations, recurring addresses and specific sites, and similar patterns of agricultural activity advertised by all three companies.
These indicators suggest possible operational continuity, but are not sufficient on their own to establish a legal merger or the transfer of ownership of assets and contracts.
Drawing on open sources, this report traces the transition of agricultural activity from local entities in Idlib to a company that, according to one of its officials, belongs to a sector within the Syrian sovereign fund.
It examines what the available evidence reveals about the relationship between Iktifaa, Al Khadraa and Ghiras, the legal and administrative basis for the transfer of activity, and the clarity and transparency of that process.
A company affiliated with the sovereign fund?
The controversy surrounding Iktifaa concerns more than the types of investment it oversees. It also extends to the period when it was managed by Basel al-Suwaidan, the current agriculture minister and head of the illicit gains committee. At the time, he was deputy minister and simultaneously held several other positions.
Speaking to Zaman al-Wasl on 11 February 2026, al-Suwaidan explained that the company was the government’s investment arm, with an administrative structure that included an executive, financial and administrative director. He said he received only one salary and stressed that he received no additional payments, travel allowances or other benefits.
According to the biography published when a presidential decree appointed him minister on 9 May 2026, al-Suwaidan had served as general manager of Iktifaa, Al Khadraa and Ghiras Agricultural Investment. He had also been director of the sovereign fund’s agriculture and livestock sector and chaired the “combating illicit gains” committee.
On 18 February 2026, al-Suwaidan posted a message on his personal Facebook page thanking Iktifaa’s staff and wishing Mohammad Hanouf success “in his mission as general manager of the company and director of the agricultural sector in the Syrian sovereign fund.”
The post did not mention a resignation or explain his departure, but Zaman al-Wasl had previously quoted private sources as saying he had resigned from both posts.
These indications, together with the statement to Syria TV on 13 October 2026 by Mundhir al-Zuhouri, the company’s Hama branch director, that Iktifaa belongs to the fund’s agriculture and livestock sector, point to an administrative link between the company and the sector. The apparent transfer of both posts together from one person to another suggests an organisational connection.
These statements and posts do not, however, establish the company’s legal status. Is it owned by the fund, administratively subordinate to it, or a government entity managed through one of its sectors? Noon Post found no open-source document answering that question. At the time of writing, it had also found nothing on the fund’s website addressing the company’s status.
The companies’ history and legal identity
To understand Iktifaa’s background and how it took its current form, Noon Post examined its website, then reviewed archived posts on its Telegram channel.
That review led to posts linked to Ghiras and Al Khadraa Agricultural Investment, two companies that media reports had previously described as having merged under the Iktifaa name.
Noon Post then examined the three companies’ online archives, comparing their posts, the dates they first appeared, and the names of projects, auctions and locations they mentioned. It sought evidence that could help explain their relationship and whether Iktifaa’s emergence was accompanied by a transfer of agricultural activities, projects or administrative structures from the earlier entities.
The website names the company as “Iktifaa Agricultural Investment Company” (Iktifaa). Its “About Us” section gives no founding date, but sets out its mission, vision and goals, notably “enhancing food security in northern Syria and the region to achieve high levels of self-sufficiency and abundant agricultural products.”
The website does not clearly define the company’s geographical remit. It leaves “northern Syria” undefined, while the meaning of “the region” is unclear: whether it refers to particular areas within Syria or to the country as a whole.
Before the former regime’s fall, “northern Syria” had also been used to describe opposition-held areas in Idlib and parts of the western Aleppo countryside and Latakia. These were the same areas where Ghiras and Al Khadraa advertised auctions before Iktifaa appeared.
This geographical overlap does not establish whether the description was simply left unchanged, whether it reflects continuity with the earlier entities’ published profiles, or whether “northern Syria” was used in a general sense without a precise geographical meaning.
The company’s Hama and Homs branch director, however, told Middle East Eye that it now operates in every Syrian province except Hasakah and Sweida, indicating a broader geographical reach than its published description suggests.
According to domain registration data available through ICANN Lookup, the company’s website domain, iktifaa-syria.com, was first registered on 23 June 2024. Its current registration expires on 23 June 2028. These data do not establish when the company was founded or began operating, nor are they sufficient on their own to identify the domain’s actual owner.
The website also displays figures under the heading “Volume of work during 2023,” although its domain was first registered in June 2024. This raises questions about the figures’ source: whether they reflect Iktifaa’s activities before its online appearance, or draw on earlier statistics or work undertaken by Ghiras and Al Khadraa before Iktifaa emerged in its current form.
The website lists an address in Idlib province without clarifying whether it identifies only the headquarters or also indicates the company’s area of operation.
Iktifaa’s official Telegram channel was created on 22 October 2024. It began publishing public auction notices for leasing land within its projects on 16 November that year.
The beginnings of Al Khadraa
Among the open sources it reviewed, Noon Post found no official statement or published document announcing Iktifaa’s establishment, apart from a promotional image shared on the Telegram channels of Ghiras and Al Khadraa Agricultural. It bore the phrase “Coming soon, the leading company in the agricultural sector.”
Media reports have described a connection between the three companies, with some stating that Iktifaa emerged from a merger of Ghiras and Al Khadraa. However, those reports were not based on an available official document establishing that a merger had occurred or explaining its legal nature.
The Telegram channel of “Al Khadraa Agricultural Investment Company” was created on 1 January 2022. Its earliest posts described the company as specialising in agricultural investment, grain trading and screening, as well as fertilisers, medicines and agricultural seeds.
An introductory image named its director as Abdul Majeed Khattab. Bilal Mousa later appeared as another director in a promotional video published on 23 May 2022 about equipping a second machine for screening grain and agricultural crops. Another video, published on 4 June, introduced a man named “Abu Salah” as one of the company’s investors.
The company advertised investments in agricultural land across several areas of northern Syria. On 13 July 2022, it announced plans to hold auctions for leasing or guaranteeing part of its “stubble lands,” before publishing its first auction notice on 22 July. Further notices followed for land in different areas. The locations named in those posts indicate a geographical reach extending across parts of Idlib, the Aleppo countryside and the Syrian coast.
On 9 May 2022, the company also reposted a link to the channel of the “Ghiras Foundation for the Investment of Fruit Trees, including olives, citrus, almonds and all types of trees,” encouraging its followers to follow that channel. This indicates a publicly declared communication link between the two channels from that date.
The auction notices also repeatedly featured the name “Ghiras for Development and Agricultural Investment” alongside Al Khadraa. On 22 September 2022, Al Khadraa published an auction notice in Ghiras’s name.
From 1 to 20 October 2024, the Al Khadraa posts reviewed were limited to reposts from the Ghiras channel.
On 22 October, the channel shared Iktifaa’s “coming soon” announcement and subsequently began reposting its content. The last post identified on Al Khadraa’s channel was dated 30 January 2024.
Ghiras Agricultural Investment
The Telegram channel “Ghiras for Development and Agricultural Investment” was created on 3 May 2022. Its posts advertised the company’s activities through three branches or operational areas described as northern, southern and western. These labels show a publicly declared geographical division of its activities, while addresses in public auction notices indicate offices and operational sites in several parts of Idlib province.
On 31 May 2022, the channel reported that the “director of Ghiras Foundation” had participated in a presentation of a master’s project on conservation agriculture. The presentation took place during a field day at the Kafrihamul agricultural station, organised by the General Administration for Agricultural Scientific Research in cooperation with the ministries of agriculture and irrigation, higher education and scientific research, and the University of Idlib.
The research was titled “The effect of the conservation agriculture system on some physical properties of soil and the yield of soft wheat.” The University of Idlib’s register of master’s and doctoral theses lists it under Basel al-Suwaidan’s name in rural engineering, under registration decision No. 590, issued on 9 May 2022. This indicates that al-Suwaidan was managing Ghiras in 2022, although the company’s post does not explicitly name the director.
Ghiras advertised public auctions for agricultural investment in land in several areas, including Qeniyeh, al-Yacoubiyeh, al-Jadidah, Kafriya and al-Foua. Many of these towns’ original residents left during the years of the revolution. This calls for clarification of the land’s status, who holds rights to it and the legal basis for investing in it.
The channel also reposted content from “Al Khadraa Agricultural Investment Company”, showing an overlap between the two channels’ posts.
On 22 October 2024, it shared Iktifaa’s “coming soon” announcement and subsequently reposted its content.
The last post identified on the Ghiras channel was dated 25 November 2024. This chronology places the channel’s activity within the transition to promoting Iktifaa, but does not by itself establish that Ghiras merged into Iktifaa or that its assets or management were legally transferred to it.
Shared locations
Auction notices published under Iktifaa’s name use two forms of classification: branches named after Syrian provinces and regions, such as Iktifaa Damascus, Iktifaa Aleppo and Iktifaa Idlib; and numbered projects beginning with “Iktifaa 1”. Auctions listed under these projects cover crop guarantees and leases for land, pastures and greenhouses.
The notices reviewed indicate that the project numbers do not necessarily denote mutually exclusive geographical areas. Some auctions are concentrated in nearby locations, while other areas feature in notices associated with more than one project.
This suggests that the numbers classify groups of operations or agricultural assets. The published information is insufficient, however, to establish the administrative or geographical basis for that classification.
The review alone cannot establish the full scale of the company’s activities or the scope of each project. It does, however, show that the advertised auctions cover a wide geographical area and a variety of agricultural assets offered for investment.
Auction notices published under Al Khadraa’s and Ghiras’s names reveal differences in their advertised activities. The Al Khadraa notices reviewed focused on leasing land and pastures, including stubble land and crop fields designated for grazing after harvest. Ghiras’s notices predominantly concerned guarantees on fruit trees and seasonal crops, including olives, figs, walnuts, pomegranates and lemons, as well as firewood sales.
Some Al Khadraa auctions were held in offices belonging to Ghiras, indicating that the companies used some of the same auction sites before Iktifaa appeared in the notices.
A comparison with later notices published under Iktifaa’s name shows that it offers auctions covering both types of activity, from leasing land and pastures to guaranteeing fruit-tree production and selling firewood.
These activities appear across the numbered projects, with stubble land offered for lease under several projects and guarantees offered on olive, fig, walnut and pomegranate crops in different areas.
The similarities point to continuity in the advertised forms of agricultural investment. They are not sufficient on their own, however, to establish the transfer of specific contracts or assets from Al Khadraa or Ghiras to Iktifaa, or to determine the legal relationship between the three companies.
The similarities extend beyond the types of agricultural auction. A comparison of identifiable addresses found several distinctive locations recurring across the companies’ notices. These included the “Red House” in Katrin village, the “Ghiras” olive press at the Amoud junction in al-Zarzour, and the Harem office, described as about 200 metres past the checkpoint.
These matches indicate that Iktifaa used addresses corresponding to sites where Ghiras or Al Khadraa had previously advertised offices. This reinforces the possibility that part of the earlier local office network remained in use.
The published address descriptions alone do not establish that ownership or formal management of the offices was transferred. Nor do they determine whether the shared locations resulted from an institutional merger, operational continuity or another arrangement.
A journalist from Idlib familiar with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s rule told Noon Post that the group relied on an overlapping network of companies and commercial entities to maintain its grip on several economic sectors and control flows of resources, investment and trade.
This structure was not driven by economic considerations alone. It also allowed some activities to be distanced from direct association with the faction, given its terrorist designation and the resulting risks for financial dealings and cooperation with civil and humanitarian organisations.
The network thus served a dual function: securing resources for the group and giving it greater commercial flexibility in an environment highly sensitive to financial and institutional relationships. It also stimulated commercial activity in the region.
The journalist added that the danger today lies in the possibility of these overlapping interests spreading into the wider Syrian economy, as companies and figures linked to the management of Idlib’s economy remain active in investment, services and public assets.
Unless commercial interests are separated from public decision-making, and the companies linked to those interests are subject to clear disclosure and oversight standards, concentrated influence and monopolies could re-emerge in new forms, limiting competition and weakening investor confidence, he said.
Clarity over beneficial ownership, publication of contracts and independent oversight of public asset management are therefore essential to prevent these practices from being carried over into the new Syrian economy.